Relative Safety Of Moderate Marijuana Smoking Not Challenged By New Study

(Received via e-mail Aug. 20, 1998)

Los Angeles-- Long-term marijuana smokers may develop
pre-cancerous changes in bronchial cells at similar rates to tobacco
smokers, suggests a UCLA study reported in this week's Journal of the
National Cancer Institute.

NORML board member Dr. John Morgan of the City University of New York
(CUNY) Medical School said that the data must not overshadow decades of
research illustrating the relative safety of moderate marijuana smoking.
"There are no epidemiological or aggregate clinical data showing higher
rates of lung cancer in people who smoke marijuana," he said. Morgan
noted that a decade long study completed by Kaiser Permanente last year
found no increase in deaths among 14,000-plus marijuana smokers when compared
to nonsmokers.

"Like tobacco smoke, marijuana smoke contains a number of irritants
and carcinogens," Morgan said. "However, most marijuana-only smokers in
the United States probably do not ingest enough smoke to cause serious
lung damage." Marijuana smokers in the UCLA study admitted smoking 10
joints or more per week for the past five years. Most recreational
marijuana users smoke far less than that, Morgan speculated.

Morgan added that THC, one of the chief active ingredients in
marijuana, does not appear to be carcinogenic and may offer protection
against the development of some malignancies. He pointed to the results
of a $2 million federal study demonstrating that rats fed huge doses of
THC over long periods failed to develop cancer and had fewer tumors than
rats not given the compound.

The UCLA study found that 54 percent of tobacco smokers and 67 percent
of marijuana smokers showed evidence of potentially cancerous molecular
alternations in their lung tissues. Only 11 percent of nonsmokers showed
any pre-cancerous changes.

Habitual smokers of tobacco and marijuana had a 100 percent incidence
of basal cell hyperplasia, a genetic marker associated with increased
risk of lung cancer. One-hundred-and-four people participated in the
study.

NORML Executive Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. said the study's
findings do not justify arresting and jailing marijuana smokers. "Any
risk presented by marijuana smoking falls well within the ambit of choice
we permit the individual in a free society," he said. "We do not suggest
that marijuana is totally harmless or that it cannot be abused. That is
true for all drugs, including those which are legal. Clearly, however,
marijuana's relative risk to the user and society in no way warrants
arresting more than 642,000 marijuana smokers each year."

Stroup added that the research strengthened the need to reform federal
and state laws that forbid the use of paraphernalia that limits the
amount of noxious smoke inhaled by marijuana consumers. "Any potential
health risk from marijuana smoking comes from the consumption of
carcinogenic smoke, not the active compounds in marijuana. It is
counter-productive for the government to forbid the use of products like
vaporizers that can greatly reduce this particular risk to the lungs."

For more information, please contact either Dr. John Morgan of CUNY
Medical School, (212) 650-8255, or Paul Armentano of The NORML Foundation,
(202) 483-8751. Copies of the 1997 Kaiser Permanente marijuana and
mortality study are available upon request from The NORML Foundation.